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With the expansion of IoT devices in many aspects of our life, the security of such systems has become an important challenge. Unlike conventional computer systems, any IoT security solution should consider the constraints of these systems such as computational capability, memory, connectivity, and power consumption limitations. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with their special characteristics were introduced to satisfy the security needs while respecting the mentioned constraints. They exploit the uncontrollable and reproducible variations of the underlying component for security applications such as identification, authentication, and communication security. Since IoT devices are typically low cost, it is important to reuse existing elements in their hardware (for instance sensors, ADCs, etc.) instead of adding extra costs for the PUF hardware. Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) devices are widely used in IoT systems as sensors and actuators. In this thesis, a comprehensive study of the potential application of MEMS devices as PUF primitives is provided. MEMS PUF leverages the uncontrollable variations in the parameters of MEMS elements to derive secure keys for cryptographic applications. Experimental and simulation results show that our proposed MEMS PUFs are capable of generating enough entropy for a complex key generation, while their responses show low fluctuations in different environmental conditions.
Keeping in mind that the PUF responses are prone to change in the presence of noise and environmental variations, it is critical to derive reliable keys from the PUF and to use the maximum entropy at the same time. In the second part of this thesis, we elaborate on different key generation schemes and their advantages and drawbacks. We propose the PUF output positioning (POP) and integer linear programming (ILP) methods, which are novel methods for grouping the PUF outputs in order to maximize the extracted entropy. To implement these methods, the key enrollment and key generation algorithms are presented. The proposed methods are then evaluated by applying on the responses of the MEMS PUF, where it can be practically shown that the proposed method outperforms other existing PUF key generation methods.
The final part of this thesis is dedicated to the application of the MEMS PUF as a security solution for IoT systems. We select the mutual authentication of IoT devices and their backend system, and propose two lightweight authentication protocols based on MEMS PUFs. The presented protocols undergo a comprehensive security analysis to show their eligibility to be used in IoT systems. As the result, the output of this thesis is a lightweight security solution based on MEMS PUFs, which introduces a very low overhead on the cost of the hardware.
State-of-the-art models for pixel-wise prediction tasks such as image restoration, image segmentation, or disparity estimation, involve several stages of data resampling, in which the resolution of feature maps is first reduced to aggregate information and then sequentially increased to generate a high-resolution output. Several previous works have investigated the effect of artifacts that are invoked during downsampling and diverse cures have been proposed that facilitate to improve prediction stability and even robustness for image classification. However, equally relevant, artifacts that arise during upsampling have been less discussed. This is significantly relevant as upsampling and downsampling approaches face fundamentally different challenges. While during downsampling, aliases and artifacts can be reduced by blurring feature maps, the emergence of fine details is crucial during upsampling. Blurring is therefore not an option and dedicated operations need to be considered. In this work, we are the first to explore the relevance of context during upsampling by employing convolutional upsampling operations with increasing kernel size while keeping the encoder unchanged. We find that increased kernel sizes can in general improve the prediction stability in tasks such as image restoration or image segmentation, while a block that allows for a combination of small-size kernels for fine details and large-size kernels for artifact removal and increased context yields the best results.
When people with hearing loss are provided with different devices in each ear, these devices usually have different processing latencies. This leads to static temporal offsets between both ears in the order of several milliseconds. This thesis measured effects of such offsets in stimulation timing on mechanisms of binaural hearing, such as sound localization and speech understanding in noise in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a key tool to have a complete understanding of the costs associated with an investment, as it allows to analyze not only the initial acquisition costs, but also the long-term costs related to operation, maintenance, depreciation, and other factors. In the context of the cement industry, TCO is especially important due to the complexity of the production processes and the wide variety of components and machinery involved in the process.
For this reason, a TCO analysis for the cement industry has been conducted in this study, with the objective of showing the different components of the cost of production. This analysis will allow the reader to gain knowledge about these costs, in the industrial model will be to make informed decisions on the adoption of technologies and practices that will allow them to reduce costs in the long run and improve their operational efficiency.
In particular, this study pursues to give visibility to technologies and practices that enable the reduction of carbon emissions in cement production, thus contributing to the sustainability of industry and the protection of the environment. By being at the forefront of sustainability issues, the cement industry can contribute to the achievement of environmentally friendly technologies and enable the development of people and industry.
The Oxyfuel technology has been selected as a carbon capture solution for the cement industry due to its practical application, low costs, and practical adaptation to non-capture processes. The adoption of this technology allows for a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, which is a crucial factor in achieving sustainability in the cement manufacturing process.
Carbon capture storage technologies represent a high investment, although these technologies increase the cost of production, the application of Oxyfuel technology is one of the most economically viable as the cheapest technology per capture according to the comparison. However, this price increase is a technical advantage as the carbon capture efficiency of this technology reaches 90%. This level of efficiency leads to a decrease in taxes for the generation of CO2 emissions, making the cement manufacturing process sustainable.
A balcony photovoltaic (PV) system, also known as a micro-PV system, is a small PV system consisting of one or two solar modules with an output of 100–600 Wp and a corresponding inverter that uses standard plugs to feed the renewable energy into the house grid. In the present study we demonstrate the integration of a commercial lithium-ion battery into a commercial micro-PV system. We firstly show simulations over one year with one second time resolution which we use to assess the influence of battery and PV size on self-consumption, self-sufficiency and the annual cost savings. We then develop and operate experimental setups using two different architectures for integrating the battery into the micro-PV system. In the passive hybrid architecture, the battery is in parallel electrical connection to the PV module. In the active hybrid architecture, an additional DC-DC converter is used. Both architectures include measures to avoid maximum power point tracking of the battery by the module inverter. Resulting PV/battery/inverter systems with 300 Wp PV and 555 Wh battery were tested in continuous operation over three days under real solar irradiance conditions. Both architectures were able to maintain stable operation and demonstrate the shift of PV energy from the day into the night. System efficiencies were observed comparable to a reference system without battery. This study therefore demonstrates the feasibility of both active and passive coupling architectures.
Ultra-low-power passive telemetry systems for industrial and biomedical applications have gained much popularity lately. The reduction of the power consumption and size of the circuits poses critical challenges in ultra-low-power circuit design. Biotelemetry applications like leakage detection in silicone breast implants require low-power-consuming small-size electronics. In this doctoral thesis, the design, simulation, and measurement of a programmable mixed-signal System-on-Chip (SoC) called General Application Passive Sensor Integrated Circuit (GAPSIC) is presented. Owing to the low power consumption, GAPSIC is capable of completely passive operation. Such a batteryless passive system has lower maintenance complexity and is also free from battery-related health hazards. With a die area of 4.92 mm² and a maximum analog power consumption of 592 µW, GAPSIC has one of the best figure-of-merits compared to similar state-of-the-art SoCs. Regarding possible applications, GAPSIC can read out and digitally transmit the signals of resistive sensors for pressure or temperature measurements. Additionally, GAPSIC can measure electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and conductivity.
The design of GAPSIC complies with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15693/NFC (near field communication) 5 standard for radio frequency identification (RFID), corresponding to the frequency range of 13.56 MHz. A passive transponder developed with GAPSIC comprises of an external memory storage and very few other external components, like an antenna and sensors. The passive tag antenna and reader antenna use inductive coupling for communication and energy transfer, which enables passive operation. A passive tag developed with GAPSIC can communicate with an NFC compatible smart device or an ISO 15693 RFID reader. An external memory storage contains the programmable application-specific firmware.
As a mixed-signal SoC, GAPSIC includes both analog and digital circuitries. The analog block of GAPSIC includes a power management unit, an RFID/NFC communication unit, and a sensor readout unit. The digital block includes an integrated 32-bit microcontroller, developed by the Hochschule Offenburg ASIC design center, and digital peripherals. A 16-kilobyte random-access memory and a read-only 16-kilobyte memory constitute the GAPSIC internal memory. For the fabrication of GAPSIC, one poly, six-metal 0.18 µm CMOS process is used.
The design of GAPSIC includes two stages. In the first stage, a standalone RFID/NFC frontend chip with a power management unit, an RFID/NFC communication unit, a clock regenerator unit, and a field detector unit was designed. In the second stage, the rest of the functional blocks were integrated with the blocks of the RFID/NFC frontend chip for the final integration of GAPSIC. To reduce the power consumption, conventional low-power design techniques were applied extensively like multiple power supplies, and the operation of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistors in the sub-threshold region of operation, as well as further innovative circuit designs.
An overvoltage protection circuit, a power rectifier, a bandgap reference circuit, and two low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulators constitute the power management unit of GAPSIC. The overvoltage protection circuit uses a novel method where three stacked transistor pairs shunt the extra voltage. In the power rectifier, four rectifier units are arranged in parallel, which is a unique approach. The four parallel rectifier units provide the optimal choice in terms of voltage drop and the area required.
The communication unit is responsible for RFID/NFC communication and incorporates demodulation and load modulation circuitry. The demodulator circuit comprises of an envelope detector, a high-pass filter, and a comparator. Following a new approach, the bandgap reference circuit itself acts as the load for the envelope detector circuit, which minimizes the circuit complexity and area. For the communication between the reader and the RFID/NFC tag, amplitude-shift keying (ASK) is used to modulate signals, where the smallest modulation index can be as low as 10%. A novel technique involving a comparator with a preset offset voltage effectively demodulates the ASK signal. With an effective die area of 0.7 mm² and power consumption of 107 µW, the standalone RFID/NFC frontend chip has the best figure-of-merits compared to the state-of-the-art frontend chips reported in the relevant literature. A passive RFID/NFC tag developed with the standalone frontend chip, as well as temperature and pressure sensors demonstrate the full passive operational capability of the frontend chip. An NFC reader device using a custom-built Android-based application software reads out the sensor data from the passive tag.
The sensor readout circuit consists of a channel selector with two differential and four single-ended inputs with a programmable-gain instrumentation amplifier. The entire sensor readout part remains deactivated when not in use. The internal memory stores the measured offset voltage of the instrumentation amplifier, where a firmware code removes the offset voltage from the measured sensor signal. A 12-bit successive approximation register (SAR) type analog-to-digital-converter (ADC) based on a charge redistribution architecture converts the measured sensor data to a digital value. The digital peripherals include a serial peripheral interface, four timers, RFID/NFC interfaces, sensor readout unit interfaces, and 12-bit SAR logic.
Two sets of studies with custom-made NFC tag antennas for biomedical applications were conducted to ascertain their compatibility with GAPSIC. The first study involved the link efficiency measurements of NFC tag antennas and an NFC reader antenna with porcine tissue. In a separate experiment, the effect of a ferrite compared to air core on the antenna-coupling factor was investigated. With the ferrite core, the coupling factor increased by four times.
Among the state-of-the-art SoCs published in recent scientific articles, GAPSIC is the only passive programmable SoC with a power management unit, an RFID/NFC communication interface, a sensor readout circuit, a 12-bit SAR ADC, and an integrated 32-bit microcontroller. This doctoral research includes the preliminary study of three passive RFID tags designed with discrete components for biomedical and industrial applications like measurements of temperature, pH, conductivity, and oxygen concentration, along with leakage detection in silicone breast implants. Besides its small size and low power consumption, GAPSIC is suitable for each of the biomedical and industrial applications mentioned above due to the integrated high-performance microcontroller, the robust programmable instrumentation amplifier, and the 12-bit analog-to-digital converter. Furthermore, the simulation and measurement data show that GAPSIC is well suited for the design of a passive tag to monitor arterial blood pressure in patients experiencing Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), which is proposed in this doctoral thesis as an exemplary application of the developed system.
Go ist eine 2009 veröffentlichte Programmiersprache mit einem statischen Typsystem. Seit Version 1.18 sind auch Generics ein Teil der Sprache. Deren Übersetzung wurde im de facto Standard-Compiler mittels Monomorphisierung umgesetzt. Diese bringt neben einigen Vorteilen auch Nachteile mit sich. Aus diesem Grund beschäftigt sich diese Arbeit mit einer alternativen Übersetzungsstrategie für Generics in Go und implementiert diese in einem neuen Compiler für Featherweight Generic Go, einem Subset von Go. Zum Schluss steht damit ein nahezu funktionierender Compiler, welcher schließlich Racket-Code ausgibt. Eine Evaluierung der Performanz der Übersetzungsstrategie ist allerdings noch ausstehend.
The accurate diagnosis of state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH) is of utmost importance for battery users and for battery manufacturers. State diagnosis is commonly based on measuring battery current and using it in Coulomb counters or as input for a current-controlled model. Here we introduce a new algorithm based on measuring battery voltage and using it as input for a voltage-controlled model. We demonstrate the algorithm using fresh and pre-aged lithium-ion battery single cells operated under well-defined laboratory conditions on full cycles, shallow cycles, and a dynamic battery electric vehicle load profile. We show that both SOC and SOH are accurately estimated using a simple equivalent circuit model. The new algorithm is self-calibrating, is robust with respect to cell aging, allows to estimate SOH from arbitrary load profiles, and is numerically simpler than state-of-the-art model-based methods.
We aim to debate and eventually be able to carefully judge how realistic the following statement of a young computer scientist is: “I would like to become an ethical correctly acting offensive cybersecurity expert”. The objective of this article is not to judge what is good and what is wrong behavior nor to present an overall solution to ethical dilemmas. Instead, the goal is to become aware of the various personal moral dilemmas a security expert may face during his work life. For this, a total of 14 cybersecurity students from HS Offenburg were asked to evaluate several case studies according to different ethical frameworks. The results and particularities are discussed, considering different ethical frameworks. We emphasize, that different ethical frameworks can lead to different preferred actions and that the moral understanding of the frameworks may differ even from student to student.
This paper has the objective of creating a framework for a different cultural dimension of corporate entrepreneurship leading to corporate entrepreneurial culture (CEC). The analysis of CEC is based on a review of existing concepts of organisational culture and entrepreneurship. They are combined to create a framework of CEC, including macro- and microlevels and examples of subcultures. Core ideas of the framework are validated by qualitative interviews with ten experts. The identified organisational category of the CEC framework is defined by the levels of micro-cultures or subcultures and includes the upper levels of the hierarchy, including the industry level. Geographic categories such as regional or national culture are also part of the system. The individual category of the CEC framework is characterised by competencies (including aspects such as motivation, creativity, mobilising others, coping with uncertainty, teamwork and social competencies) and entrepreneurial personalities. The results of the interviews show the importance of these individual competencies for a lively CEC. The different levels, such as national and professional cultures, as a dimension of the organisational category of the framework are also confirmed by the interviews. The findings indicate that the individual category of CEC could be used for job satisfaction or engagement and the degree of CEC of an organisation could be defined and developed by the organisational category. The identified framework contributes to an understanding of this complex topic and supports companies in the implementation of entrepreneurial ideas in different organisational contexts.
Lithium-ion batteries show strongly nonlinear behaviour regarding the battery current and state of charge. Therefore, the modelling of lithium-ion batteries is complex. Combining physical and data-driven models in a grey-box model can simplify the modelling. Our focus is on using neural networks, especially neural ordinary differential equations, for grey-box modelling of lithium-ion batteries. A simple equivalent circuit model serves as a basis for the grey-box model. Unknown parameters and dependencies are then replaced by learnable parameters and neural networks. We use experimental full-cycle data and data from pulse tests of a lithium iron phosphate cell to train the model. Finally, we test the model against two dynamic load profiles: one consisting of half cycles and one dynamic load profile representing a home-storage system. The dynamic response of the battery is well captured by the model.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Nutzung von Reinforcement Learning in der Informationsbeschaffungs-Phase eines Penetration Tests. Es werden Kernprobleme in den bisherigen Ansätzen anderer das Thema betreffender wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten analysiert und praktische Lösungsansätze für diese bisherigen Hindernisse vorgestellt und implementiert. Die Arbeit zeigt damit eine beispielhafte Implementierung eines Reinforcement Learning Agenten zur Automatisierung der Informationsbeschaffungs-Phase eines Penetration Tests und stellt Lösungen für existierende Probleme in diesem Bereich dar.
Eingebettet wird diese wissenschaftliche Arbeit in die Anforderungen der Herrenknecht AG hinsichtlich der Absicherung des Tunnelbohrmaschinen-Netzwerks. Dabei werden praktische Ergebnisse des eigen entwickelten Reinforcement Learning Modells im Tunnelbohrmaschinen-Test-Netzwerk der Herrenknecht AG vorgestellt.
In this paper, we study the runtime performance of symmetric cryptographic algorithms on an embedded ARM Cortex-M4 platform. Symmetric cryptographic algorithms can serve to protect the integrity and optionally, if supported by the algorithm, the confidentiality of data. A broad range of well-established algorithms exists, where the different algorithms typically have different properties and come with different computational complexity. On deeply embedded systems, the overhead imposed by cryptographic operations may be significant. We execute the algorithms AES-GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305, HMAC-SHA256, KMAC, and SipHash on an STM32 embedded microcontroller and benchmark the execution times of the algorithms as a function of the input lengths.
The contribution of the RoofKIT student team to the SDE 21/22 competition is the extension of an existing café in Wuppertal, Germany, to create new functions and living space for the building with simultaneous energetic upgrading. A demonstration unit is built representing a small cut-out of this extension. The developed energy concept was thoroughly simulated by the student team in seminars using Modelica. The system uses mainly solar energy via PVT collectors as the heat source for a brine-water heat pump (space heating and hot water). Energy storage (thermal and electrical) is installed to decouple generation and consumption. Simulation results confirm that carbon neutrality is achieved for the building operation, consuming and generating around 60 kWh/m2a.
Due to its performance, the field of deep learning has gained a lot of attention, with neural networks succeeding in areas like Computer Vision (CV), Neural Language Processing (NLP), and Reinforcement Learning (RL). However, high accuracy comes at a computational cost as larger networks require longer training time and no longer fit onto a single GPU. To reduce training costs, researchers are looking into the dynamics of different optimizers, in order to find ways to make training more efficient. Resource requirements can be limited by reducing model size during training or designing more efficient models that improve accuracy without increasing network size.
This thesis combines eigenvalue computation and high-dimensional loss surface visualization to study different optimizers and deep neural network models. Eigenvectors of different eigenvalues are computed, and the loss landscape and optimizer trajectory are projected onto the plane spanned by those eigenvectors. A new parallelization method for the stochastic Lanczos method is introduced, resulting in faster computation and thus enabling high-resolution videos of the trajectory and secondorder information during neural network training. Additionally, the thesis presents the loss landscape between two minima along with the eigenvalue density spectrum at intermediate points for the first time.
Secondly, this thesis presents a regularization method for Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) that uses second-order information. The gradient during training is modified by subtracting the eigenvector direction of the biggest eigenvalue, preventing the network from falling into the steepest minima and avoiding mode collapse. The thesis also shows the full eigenvalue density spectra of GANs during training.
Thirdly, this thesis introduces ProxSGD, a proximal algorithm for neural network training that guarantees convergence to a stationary point and unifies multiple popular optimizers. Proximal gradients are used to find a closed-form solution to the problem of training neural networks with smooth and non-smooth regularizations, resulting in better sparsity and more efficient optimization. Experiments show that ProxSGD can find sparser networks while reaching the same accuracy as popular optimizers.
Lastly, this thesis unifies sparsity and neural architecture search (NAS) through the framework of group sparsity. Group sparsity is achieved through ℓ2,1-regularization during training, allowing for filter and operation pruning to reduce model size with minimal sacrifice in accuracy. By grouping multiple operations together, group sparsity can be used for NAS as well. This approach is shown to be more robust while still achieving competitive accuracies compared to state-of-the-art methods
The use of artificial intelligence continues to impact a broad variety of domains, application areas, and people. However, interpretability, understandability, responsibility, accountability, and fairness of the algorithms' results - all crucial for increasing humans' trust into the systems - are still largely missing. The purpose of this seminar is to understand how these components factor into the holistic view of trust. Further, this seminar seeks to identify design guidelines and best practices for how to build interactive visualization systems to calibrate trust.
Alexander von Humboldt, a German scientist and explorer of the 19th century, viewed the natural world holistically and described the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world as a conjoining between all physical disciplines. He noted in his diary: “Everything is interconnectedness.”
The main feature of Humboldt’s pioneering work was later named “Humboldtian science”, meaning the accurate study of interconnected real phenomena in order to find a definite law and a dynamic cause.
Following Humboldt's idea of nature, an Internet edition of his works must preserve the author’s original intention, retain an awareness of all relevant works, and still adhere to the requirements of scholarly edition.
At the present time, however, the highly unconventional form of his publications has undermined the awareness and a comprehensive study of Humboldt’s works.
Digital libraries should supply dynamic links to sources, maps, images, graphs and relevant texts. New forms of interaction and synthesis between humanistic texts and scientific observation need to be created.
Information technology is the only way to do justice to the broad range of visions, descriptions and the idea of nature of Humboldt’s legacy. It finally leads to virtual research environments as an adequate concept to redesign our digital archives, not only for Humboldt’s documents, but for all interconnected data.
The Humboldt Portal has been designed and implemented as part of an ongoing research project to develop an information system on the Internet to share the documents and rare books of Alexander von Humboldt, a 19th century German scientist and explorer, who viewed the natural world holistically and described the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world. Even after more than two centuries he is admired for his ability to see the natural world and human nature in the context of a complex network of relationships. The design and implementation of the Humboldt Portal are also oriented to support further research on Humboldt’s intellectual perspective.
Although all of Humboldt's works can be found on the internet as digitized documents, the complexity and internal inter-connectivity of his vision of nature cannot be adequately represented only by digitized papers or scanned documents in digital libraries.
As a consequence a specific portal of the Humboldt's documents was developed, which extends the standards of digital libraries and offers a technical approach for the adequate presentation of highly interconnected data.
Due to the continuous scientific and literary research, new insights and requirements for the digital presentation of Humboldt documents are constantly emerging, so that this article only provides a summary of the concepts realized at now. Consequently, the design and implementation of the Humboldt Portal is both: a consequence of a continuing research project and oriented to support more research on Humboldt´s intellectual holistic perspective, which was an anticipation to the System Approach of the last Century.
Automatic Identification of Travel Locations in Rare Books - Object Oriented Information Management
(2017)
The digital content of the Internet is growing exponentially and mass digitization of printed media opens access to literature, in particular the genre of travel literature from the 18th and 19th century, which consists of diaries or travel books describing routes, observations or inspirations. The identification of described locations in the digital text is a long-standing challenge which requires information technology to supply dynamic links to sources by new forms of interaction and synthesis between humanistic texts and scientific observations.
Using object oriented information technology, a prototype of a software tool is developed which makes it possible to automatically identify geographic locations and travel routes mentioned in rare books. The information objects contain properties such as names and classification codes for populated places, streams, mountains and regions. Together, with the latitudes and longitudes of every single location, it is possible to geo-reference this information in order that all processed and filtered datasets can be displayed by a map application. This method has already been used in the Humboldt Digital Library to present Alexander von Humboldt’s maps and was tested in a case study to prove the correctness and reliability of the automatic identification of locations based on the work of Alexander von Humboldt and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The results reveal numerous errors due to misspellings, change of location names, equality of terms and location names. But on the other hand it becomes very clear that results of the automatic object detection and recognition can be improved by error-free and comprehensive sources. As a result an increase in quality and usability of the service can be expected, accompanied by more options to detect unknown locations in the descriptions of rare books.
In the 19th century Alexander von Humboldt explored the nature and was conceived a new vision of nature that still influences the way we understand the new world. Humboldt believed in the importance of accurate measurements and precise description of observations. His vision of nature included not only facts but also emotions.
Nowadays smart solutions will be developed by using computer technology, which will influence our relationship to nature, our handling of the complexity and diversity of nature itself and the technological influences on the society. Could we avoid a new form of “Colonialism”, when a network of super computers will create a smarter world?
Nowadays decarbonisation of the energy system is one of the main concerns for most governments. Renewable energy technologies, such as rooftop photovoltaic systems and home battery storage systems, are changing the energy system to be more decentralised. As a consequence, new ways of energy business models are emerging, e.g., peer-to-peer energy trading. This new concept provides an online marketplace where direct energy exchange can occur between its participants. The purpose of this study is to conduct a content analysis of the existing literature, ongoing research projects, and companies related to peer-to-peer energy trading. From this review, a summary of the most important aspects and journal papers is assessed, discussed, and classified. It was found that the different energy market types were named in various ways and a proposal for standard language for the several peer-to-peer market types and the different actors involved is suggested. Additionally, by grouping the most important attributes from peer-to-peer energy trading projects, an assessment of the entry barrier and scalability potential is performed by using a characterisation matrix.
In den letzten Jahren entstand ein regelrechter Hype um das Thema Kryptowährungen und sie sind in Gesellschaft, Politik und Wirtschaft kaum noch wegzudenken. Trotz der hohen Volatilität und des Risikos für Investoren werden Kryptowährungen teilweise auch als eine Alternative für herkömmliche Währungen angesehen. Daher stellt sich die Frage, ob die Einstellung zu Kryptowährungen und auch das Investitionsverhalten auf einer sorgfältigen Auseinandersetzung von Argumenten basiert. Dafür wurde die Forschungsfrage: „Basieren Kaufverhalten und Einstellung zu Kryptowährungen eher auf der intensiven Auseinandersetzung mit tatsächlichen Argumenten oder auf oberflächlichen Reizen?“ aufgestellt. Zur Untersuchung dieser wurde eine Umfrage mit 283 Teilnehmenden durchgeführt. Auf Basis theoretischer Überlegungen zur Einstellungsforschung durch das Elaboration-Likelihood-Model wurde ein Fragebogen entworfen, der den Einfluss der Elaboration auf die Einstellung und das Kaufverhalten empirisch messbar machen sollte. Durch eine Kausalanalyse mittels Strukturgleichungsmodell konnte ein teilweise signifikanter Einfluss von elaborationsbestimmenden Größen auf Einstellung und Kaufverhalten festgestellt werden. Eine Überprüfung der Gütekriterien des Fragebogens mittels explorativer und konfirmatorischer Faktoranalyse ergab in Hinsicht auf Reliabilität und Validität jedoch keine zufriedenstellenden Ergebnisse. Die Ergebnisse des Kausalmodells sollten deswegen mit Vorsicht betrachtet werden. In weiterführenden Forschungen könnte die Struktur der durch den Fragebogen erhobenen Konstrukte für Elaboration und Einstellung überarbeitet werden, um eine bessere Reliabilität und Validität zu erreichen und somit genauere Aussagen über die eigentlichen Beziehungen der Konstrukte treffen zu können.
The variable refrigerant flow system is one of the best heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC) thanks to its ability to provide thermal comfort inside buildings. But, at the same time, these systems are considered one of the most energy-consuming systems in the building sector. Thus, it is crucial to well size the system according to the building’s cooling and heating needs and the indoor temperature fluctuations. Although many researchers have studied the optimization of the building energy performance considering heating or cooling needs, using air handling units, radiant floor heating, and direct expansion valves, few studies have considered the use of multi-objective optimization using only the thermostat setpoints of VRF systems for both cooling and heating needs. Thus, the main aim of this study is to conduct a sensitivity analysis and a multi-objective optimization strategy for a residential building containing a variable refrigerant flow system, to evaluate the effect of the building performance on energy consumption and improve the building energy efficiency. The numerical model was based on the EnergyPlus, jEPlus, and jEPlus+EA simulation engines. The approach used in this paper has allowed us to reach significant quantitative energy saving by varying the cooling and heating setpoints and scheduling scenarios. It should be stressed that this approach could be applied to several HVAC systems to reduce energy-building consumption.
Vorhofflimmern ist die häufigste tachykarde Herzrhythmusstörung weltweit. Dabei verliert das Herz seinen normofrequenten Sinusrhythmus und schlägt nicht mehr regelmäßig, sondern zu schnell und unregelmäßig. Vorhofflimmern ist normalerweise keine lebensbedrohliche Herzrhythmusstörung, aber es kann zu einem Schlaganfall führen. Die Ursache dieser Herzrhythmusstörung sind die Kreisende bzw. die fokalen Erregungen im linken Atrium, die hauptsächliche aus einer oder mehreren Pulmonalvenen kommen. Die übliche Therapieverfahren des Vorhofflimmerns ist die Pulmonalvenenisolation.
Diese Bachelorthesis beschäftigt sich daher mit der Modellierung unterschiedlicher linksatrialer Fokus-Modelle und intrakardialer Elektrodenkatheter für die Diagnostik und Terminierung von Vorhofflimmern mittels Pulmonalvenenisolation im Offenburger Herzrhythmusmodell nach Schalk, Krämer und Benke, welches in CST
Studio Suite realisiert wurde.
Zu Beginn wurden die verschiedenen linksatrialen fokalen Flimmerquellen modelliert und daraufhin simuliert. Hierbei wurde jeweils eine Simulation mit linksatrialen fokalen Flimmerquellen, die aus einzelnen, dualen oder allen vier Pulmonalvenen kommen, durchgeführt. Es wurde ebenfalls eine weitere Simulation mit Biosignalen (aus der Realität) erstellt. Mit diesen Simulationen konnte nun der elektrische Erregungsablauf sichtbar gemacht werden. Daraufhin wurden die Katheter für die Diagnostik und für die Pulmonalvenenisolation modelliert und in das bestehende Offenburger Herzrhythmusmodell integriert. Bei den Diagnostik-Kathetern handelte es sich um 10-polige Lasso® Katheter, zwei Varianten von PentaRay® NAV eco Katheter und 4-polige Diagnostik-Katheter „OSYPKA FINDER pure®“. Ablationskatheter sind zwei Varianten von Pentaspline Basket pose Katheter und HELIOSTAR™ Ablation Ballon. Abschließend wurden verschiedene Varianten von Isolationsverfahren der Pulmonalvenen modelliert und daraufhin die linksatrialen fokalen Flimmerquellen nach der Isolation der Pulmonalvenen simuliert.
DE\GLOBALIZE
(2022)
The artistic research cycle DE\GLOBALIZE is a media ecological search movement for the terrestrial. After examining matters of fact in India (2014-18), matters of concern in Egypt (2016-2019) and matters of care in the Upper Rhine (2018-22), the focus turns toward matters of violence in the Congo (2022). From matter to mater, mother-earth, the garden to exploitation. From science, water and climate to migration, oppression and extermination.
The long-term research is accessible through interactive web documentation. The platform serves as a continuous media-archaeological archive for a speculative ethnography. The relational structure of the videographic essay is enabling the forensic processing of single documents in the sense of the actor-network theory.
The subject of the presentation at IFM is a field trip to the Congo planned for March 2022, which will focus on the ambivalence of violence and care in collaboration with local artists. The field trip is based on the postcolonial reflection luderitzcargo by the author from 1996, in which a freight container was transformed into a translocal cinema in Namibia.
Through the journey to Congo, a group of media artists, a psychotherapist, a theater dramaturg, a filmmaker and a philosopher intend to explore the political, technological and psycho-geographic borders. By artistic interventions with locals, we want to interfere with relational string figures as part of the new Earth Politics. They are focusing on the displaced consumption of resources which are hard-fought and guarantee prosperity in the global north. The so-called ghost acreages are repressed and justified as part of a civilizational mission. With this trip, we want to confront our self-lies with the ones of our hosts. We want to confront ourselves with the foreign, the dark and the displaced ghosts within ourselves. In the presentation at the #IFM2022 Conference, the platform DE\GLOBALIZE will be problematized itself as an example of epistemic violence for the ethnographic memory of (Western) knowledge.
We are not the missionaries but the perplexed travellers. In our search movement, we are dealing with psychoanalysis, video, performance and trance. As disoriented white men we try the reversal of Black Skin and White Mask by Franz Fanon without blackfacing. We will not only care about the sensitivity of our skin but that of our g/hosts and the one of mother earth.
Inner Congo
(2023)
This research-creation project, part of the DE\GLOBALIZE artistic research cycle presented at the #IFM2022 Conference, investigates the complexities of Congo violence, care, and colonialism. Drawing on Michel Serres' metaphor of the great estuaries, the study explores the topology of interactive documentaries, blending theory, emotion, and personal experiences. Accessible through the interactive web documentation at http://deglobalize.com, the platform offers a media-archaeological archive for speculative ethnography, enabling the forensic processing of single documents in line with actor-network theory.
Learning to Walk With Toes
(2020)
This paper explains how a model-free (with respect to the robot model and the behavior to learn) approach can facilitate learning to walk from scratch. It is applied to a simulated Nao robot with toes. Results show an improvement of 30% in speed compared to a model without toes and also compared to our model-based approach, but with less stability.
Diese Bachelorthesis befasst sich mit der Testung eines an der TU München entwickelten Biosignalverstärkers zur Registrierung von auditorisch evozierten Potentialen. Ziel dieses Projekts ist die Charakterisierung dieses Verstärkers. Dabei soll geprüft werden, ob der Verstärker AEPs registrieren und um verstellbare Faktoren verstärken kann. Dafür wurde eine MATLAB – Software implementiert, die es erlaubt über eine Soundkarte akustische Signale mittels Kopfhörer auszugeben und zeitgleich die vom Verstärker registrierten Potentiale einzulesen, zu Mitteln und sie grafisch darzustellen.
Erste Versuche wurden mit der Loop Back Box von Interacoustics, einem Schwingkreis, der einen künstlichen Patienten simuliert, durchgeführt. Diese Versuchsreihen zeigten, dass reale Signale gemessen werden. Anschließend konnten Probandenmessungen mit dem Verstärker und Referenzmessungen mit der Eclipse von Interacoustics durchgeführt werden. Bei sämtlichen Messreihen zeigte sich im Vergleich der beiden Systeme hohe Ähnlichkeit der Kurvenverläufe. Insbesondere das zeitliche Auftreten der Jewett V, der größten gemessenen Amplitude, war nahezu identisch. Allerdings stimmen die Amplitudenwerte nicht überein. Während die Amplitude der Jewett V bei Messungen mit der Eclipse um die 1µV erreichte, war die Amplitude beim Verstärker nur ein bis zwei Nanovolt groß. Damit ist die Verstärkung um ein tausendfaches geringer als bei der Eclipse.
Anhand der gewonnenen Erkenntnisse konnten Hardware technische Optimierungen evaluiert und diskutiert werden.
In the last years, social robots have become a trending topic. Indeed, robots which communicate with us and mimic human behavior patterns are fascinating. However, while there is a massive body of research on their design and acceptance in different fields of application, their market potential has been rarely investigated. As their future integration in society may have a vast disruptive potential, this work aims at shedding light on the market potential, focusing on the assistive health domain. A study with 197 persons from Italy (age: M = 67.87; SD = 8.87) and Germany (age: M = 62.15; SD = 6.14) investigates cultural acceptance, desired functionalities, and purchase preferences. The participants filled in a questionnaire after watching a video illustrating some examples of social robots. Surprisingly, the individual perception of health status, social status as well as nationality did hardly influence the attitude towards social robots, although the German group was somewhat more reluctant to the idea of using them. Instead, there were significant correlations with most dimensions of the Almere model (like perceived enjoyment, sociability, usefulness and trustworthiness). Also, technology acceptance resulted strongly correlated with the individual readiness to invest money. However, as most persons consider social robots as “Assistive Technological Devices” (ATDs), they expected that their provision should mirror the usual practices followed in the two Countries for such devices. Thus, to facilitate social robots’ future visibility and adoption by both individuals and health care organisations, policy makers would need to start integrating them into official ATDs databases.
Following the traditional paradigm of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), modern CNNs manage to keep pace with more recent, for example transformer-based, models by not only increasing model depth and width but also the kernel size. This results in large amounts of learnable model parameters that need to be handled during training. While following the convolutional paradigm with the according spatial inductive bias, we question the significance of \emph{learned} convolution filters. In fact, our findings demonstrate that many contemporary CNN architectures can achieve high test accuracies without ever updating randomly initialized (spatial) convolution filters. Instead, simple linear combinations (implemented through efficient 1×1 convolutions) suffice to effectively recombine even random filters into expressive network operators. Furthermore, these combinations of random filters can implicitly regularize the resulting operations, mitigating overfitting and enhancing overall performance and robustness. Conversely, retaining the ability to learn filter updates can impair network performance. Lastly, although we only observe relatively small gains from learning 3×3 convolutions, the learning gains increase proportionally with kernel size, owing to the non-idealities of the independent and identically distributed (\textit{i.i.d.}) nature of default initialization techniques.
Modern CNNs are learning the weights of vast numbers of convolutional operators. In this paper, we raise the fundamental question if this is actually necessary. We show that even in the extreme case of only randomly initializing and never updating spatial filters, certain CNN architectures can be trained to surpass the accuracy of standard training. By reinterpreting the notion of pointwise ($1\times 1$) convolutions as an operator to learn linear combinations (LC) of frozen (random) spatial filters, we are able to analyze these effects and propose a generic LC convolution block that allows tuning of the linear combination rate. Empirically, we show that this approach not only allows us to reach high test accuracies on CIFAR and ImageNet but also has favorable properties regarding model robustness, generalization, sparsity, and the total number of necessary weights. Additionally, we propose a novel weight sharing mechanism, which allows sharing of a single weight tensor between all spatial convolution layers to massively reduce the number of weights.
The importance of machine learning has been increasing dramatically for years. From assistance systems to production optimisation to support the health sector, almost every area of daily life and industry comes into contact with machine learning. Besides all the benefits that ML brings, the lack of transparency and the difficulty in creating traceability pose major risks. While there are solutions that make the training of machine learning models more transparent, traceability is still a major challenge. Ensuring the identity of a model is another challenge. Unnoticed modification of a model is also a danger when using ML. One solution is to create an ML birth certificate and an ML family tree secured by blockchain technology. Important information about training and changes to the model through retraining can be stored in a blockchain and accessed by any user to create more security and traceability about an ML model.
Selbsttests in Lernmanagementsystemen (LMS) ermöglichen es Studierenden, den eigenen Lernfortschritt einzuschätzen. Im Gegensatz zur Einreichung und Korrektur vollständig ausformulierter Aufgabenlösungen nutzen LMS überwiegend die Eingabe der Lösung im Antwort-Auswahl-Verfahren (Single-Choice). Nach didaktischen Ansatz „Physik durch Informatik“ geben die Lernenden stattdessen ihre Aufgabenlösungen in einer Programmiersprache ins LMS ein, was eine automatisierte Rückmeldung erleichtert und das Erreichen einer höheren Kompetenzstufe fördert. Es wurden zehn LMS-Selbsttests erstellt, bei denen die Lösungen zu einer Lehrbuch-Aufgabenstellung jeweils durch Eingabe in einer Programmiersprache und von einer Kontrollgruppe im Antwort-Auswahl-Verfahren abgefragt wurden. Ergebnisse aus dem ersten Einsatz dieser Selbsttests für die Lehrveranstaltung Physik im Studiengang Biotechnologie werden vorgestellt.
Physik durch Informatik
(2022)
Selbsttests in Lernmanagementsystemen (LMS) ermöglichen es Studierenden, den eigenen Lernfortschritt einzuschätzen. Das didaktische Konzept Physik durch Informatik (PDI) ist charakterisiert durch die Nutzung einer Programmiersprache zur Lösungseingabe bei Mathematik und Physik-Aufgaben. Im Gegensatz zur Lösungseingabe durch Zahlenwerte oder im Antwort-Auswahl-Verfahren erfordert die Implementierung einer Lösung in einer Programmiersprache eine höhere Kompetenzstufe.
Decarbonisation Strategies in Energy Systems Modelling: APV and e-tractors as Flexibility Assets
(2023)
This work presents an analysis of the impact of introducing Agrophotovoltaic technologies and electric tractors into Germany’s energy system. Agrophotovoltaics involves installing photovoltaic systems in agricultural areas, allowing for dual usage of the land for both energy generation and food production. Electric tractors, which are agricultural machinery powered by electric motors, can also function as energy storage units, providing flexibility to the grid. The analysis includes a sensitivity study to understand how the availability of agricultural land influences Agrophotovoltaic investments, followed by the examination of various scenarios that involve converting diesel tractors to electric tractors. These scenarios are based on the current CO2 emission reduction targets set by the German Government, aiming for a 65% reduction below 1990 levels by 2030 and achieving zero emissions by 2045. The results indicate that approximately 3% of available agricultural land is necessary to establish a viable energy mix in Germany. Furthermore, the expansion of electric tractors tends to reduce the overall system costs and enhances the energy-cost-efficiency of Agrophotovoltaic investments.
The use of biochar is an important tool to improve soil fertility, reduce the negative environmental impacts of agriculture, and build up terrestrial carbon sinks. However, crop yield increases by biochar amendment were not shown consistently for fertile soils under temperate climate. Recent studies show that biochar is more likely to increase crop yields when applied in combination with nutrients to prepare biochar-based fertilizers. Here, we focused on the root-zone amendment of biochar combined with mineral fertilizers in a greenhouse trial with white cabbage (Brassica oleracea convar. Capitata var. Alba) cultivated in a nutrient-rich silt loam soil originating from the temperate climate zone (Bavaria, Germany). Biochar was applied at a low dosage (1.3 t ha−1). The biochar was placed either as a concentrated hotspot below the seedling or it was mixed into the soil in the root zone representing a mixture of biochar and soil in the planting basin. The nitrogen fertilizer (ammonium nitrate or urea) was either applied on the soil surface or loaded onto the biochar representing a nitrogen-enhanced biochar. On average, a 12% yield increase in dry cabbage heads was achieved with biochar plus fertilizer compared to the fertilized control without biochar. Most consistent positive yield responses were observed with a hotspot root-zone application of nitrogen-enhanced biochar, showing a maximum 21% dry cabbage-head yield increase. Belowground biomass and root-architecture suggested a decrease in the fine root content in these treatments compared to treatments without biochar and with soil-mixed biochar. We conclude that the hotspot amendment of a nitrogen-enhanced biochar in the root zone can optimize the growth of white cabbage by providing a nutrient depot in close proximity to the plant, enabling efficient nutrient supply. The amendment of low doses in the root zone of annual crops could become an economically interesting application option for biochar in the temperate climate zone.
Das Ziel des Projekts PRYSTINE war es, eine fehlertolerante 360°-Rundumwahrnehmung für das hochautomatisierte Fahren in städtischen und ländlichen Umgebungen, auf Basis einer robusten Radar- und Lidar-Sensorfusion sowie Kontrollfunktionen, zu realisieren.
Im Teilvorhaben "Entwurf der Systemarchitektur von Radarsensoren auf Grundlage identifizierter Szenarien" stand die Entwicklung eines zukunftsfähigen RF-CMOS basierten Radarsystems im Fokus, das sich durch eine hohe Robustheit und Fehlertoleranz bei gleichzeitiger Reduktion der Kosten, Chipfläche und Leistungsaufnahme auszeichnet.
Darin war die Hochschule Offenburg sowohl an der Spezifizierung und am Entwurf einer Systemarchitektur für einen neuartigen RF-CMOS basierten Radarchip als auch an der anschließenden Untersuchung und Validierung des im Projekt realisierten hochauflösenden Radarsensors beteiligt.
Auswirkung eines Importstopps russischer Energieträger auf die Klimaschutzziele in Deutschland
(2022)
Ein Importstopp russischer Energieträger nach Deutschland wird derzeit vermehrt diskutiert. Wir wollen die Diskussion unterstützen, indem wir einen Weg zeigen, wie das Elektrizitätssystem in Deutschland kurzfristig mit geringen Energieimporten auskommt und welche Maßnahmen notwendig sind, um die Klimaschutzziele trotzdem einzuhalten. Die Ergebnisse eines solchen Energiewendeszenarios mit reduzierter Importabhängigkeit werden mit dem Energiesystemmodell MyPyPSA-Ger berechnet. Die wichtigsten Erkenntnisse sind, dass ein zügiger Ausbau Erneuerbarer Energien und von Speichertechnologien • die Abhängigkeit des deutschen Elektrizitätssystems von Energieimporten deutlich reduziert. • auch langfristig keine wesentlichen Importe der Energieträger Erdgas, Steinkohle und Mineralöl nach sich zieht. • über die Klimaziele der Bundesregierung hinaus das 1,5-Grad-Ziel im Elektrizitätssystem erreicht wird.
The COVID19 pandemic, a unique and devastating respiratory disease outbreak, has affected global populations as the disease spreads rapidly. Recent Deep Learning breakthroughs may improve COVID19 prediction and forecasting as a tool of precise and fast detection, however, current methods are still being examined to achieve higher accuracy and precision. This study analyzed the collection contained 8055 CT image samples, 5427 of which were COVID cases and 2628 non COVID. The 9544 Xray samples included 4044 COVID patients and 5500 non COVID cases. The most accurate models are MobileNet V3 (97.872 percent), DenseNet201 (97.567 percent), and GoogleNet Inception V1 (97.643 percent). High accuracy indicates that these models can make many accurate predictions, as well as others, are also high for MobileNetV3 and DenseNet201. An extensive evaluation using accuracy, precision, and recall allows a comprehensive comparison to improve predictive models by combining loss optimization with scalable batch normalization in this study. Our analysis shows that these tactics improve model performance and resilience for advancing COVID19 prediction and detection and shows how Deep Learning can improve disease handling. The methods we suggest would strengthen healthcare systems, policymakers, and researchers to make educated decisions to reduce COVID19 and other contagious diseases.
The integration of additive manufacturing processes into the teaching of students is an important prerequisite for the further dissemination of this new technology. In this context, the DfAM is of particular importance. For this reason, this paper presents an approach in which a connection is made between methodical product development and practical implementation by AM. Using a model racing car as an example, students independently develop significant improvements of particular assemblies. A final evaluation shows that the students have significantly improved their skills and competencies.
Additive manufacturing enables the production of lightweight and resilient components with extensive design freedom. In the low-cost sector, material extrusion (e.g. Fused Deposition Modeling - FDM) has been the main method used to date. Thus, robust 3D printers and inexpensive 3D materials (polymer filaments) can be used. However, the printing times for FDM are very long and the quality of the dimensions and surfaces is limited. Recently, new processes from the field of Vat polymerization have entered the market. For example, masked stereolithography (mSLA) offers a significant improvement in component quality and build speed through the use of resins and large-area curing at still reasonable costs. Currently, there is only limited knowledge available on the optimal design of components using this young process. In this contribution, design guidelines are developed to determine the possibilities and limitations of mSLA from a design point of view. For this purpose, a number of test geometries are designed and investigated to obtain systematic insights into important design features, such as wall thickness, grooves and holes. In addition, typical problems in additive manufacturing, such as the design of overhangs and fits or the hollowing of components, are investigated. The evaluation of practical 3D printing tests thus provides important parameters that can be transferred to design guidelines of components for additive manufacturing using mSLA.
In the development of new vehicles, increasing customer comfort requirements and rising safety regulations often result in an increase in weight. Nevertheless, in order to be able to meet the demand for reduced fuel consumption, it is necessary within product development process to implement complex and filigree lightweight structures. This contribution therefore addresses the potential of generatively developed components for fiber-reinforced additive manufacturing (FRAM). Currently, several commercial systems for this application are available on the market. Therefore, a comparison of the systems is first made to determine a suitable system. Then, a highly stressed and safety-relevant chassis component of a race car is generatively designed and manufactured using FRAM. A matrix with short fiber reinforcement and additional long fiber reinforcement with carbon fibers is applied. Finally, tensile tests are carried out to check the mechanical properties. In addition, relevant properties such as weight and cost are obtained in order to be able to compare them with conventionally developed and manufactured components.
The mathematical representations of data in the Spherical Harmonic (SH) domain has recently regained increasing interest in the machine learning community. This technical report gives an in-depth introduction to the theoretical foundation and practical implementation of SH representations, summarizing works on rotation invariant and equivariant features, as well as convolutions and exact correlations of signals on spheres. In extension, these methods are then generalized from scalar SH representations to Vectorial Harmonics (VH), providing the same capabilities for 3d vector fields on spheres.
This report examines exporters’ challenges and possible solutions for public intervention to promote foreign trade. Based on fieldwork conducted in Georgia, we explore which policy approaches can help to stimulate Georgian exports further. Our outcomes show that exporters face substantial barriers such as navigating complex trade regulations, lack of knowledge about target markets, trade finance gaps, as well as new export promotion programs (EPPs) in competitor countries. Other upper-middle-income countries can learn from our results that exporters can significantly benefit from a comprehensive export promotion strategy combined with an ecosystem-based “team” approach. EPPs related to awareness and capacity building in Georgia should be part of this strategy, focusing on challenges such as a lack of knowledge about trade practices and international business skills. Other EPPs must help to mitigate related market failures, as information gathering is costly, and firms have no incentive to share this information with competitors. Furthermore, targeted marketing support and customer matchmaking can answer Georgian exporters’ challenges, such as lack of market access and low sector visibility. Our results also show that public intervention through financial support and risk mitigation is essential for firms with an international orientation. The high-quality, rich outcomes provide significant value for other upper-middle-income countries by exploring the example of Georgia’s contemporary circumstances in an in-depth manner based on extensive interviews and document analysis. Limitations include that our work primarily relies on qualitative data and further research could involve a quantitative study with a diverse range of sectors.
Public export credits and trade insurance require a global framework of institutions, rules and regulations to avoid subsidies and a race to the bottom. The extensive modernisation of the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits (Arrangement) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development intends to re-level the playing field. This Practitioner Commentary describes the demand for adequate government interventions, considers the need for the reform and discusses key aspects of the new Arrangement. We argue that there is a breakthrough in several important areas such as tenors, repayment terms and green finance. However, we also find that the modernisation falls short in areas such as the interplay between different rulebooks, pre-shipment instruments' regulations and climate action.